I’ve tested a couple body armor options for TTAG in the last year. They’ve ranging from Kevlar level IIIA vests to level III steel plates and plate carriers. And while they work, and might save your life, they’re nowhere near comfortable and are often downright cumbersome. That’s where AR500 Armor’s latest product comes in handy . . .

The usual way to make a bullet resistant panel is to sandwich layer upon layer of heavy Kevlar until you have enough material to stop the requisite projectile. Then pop that into a vest of some sort for the end user to wear. Kevlar, though, is neither lightweight nor flexible, meaning that the vests are extremely heavy and very stiff. They work, but it’s not something that you’d want to wear every day.

Thanks to recent innovations in science, though, we’re finally at the point where we can use carbon nanotubes to make incredibly strong materials that are also insanely lightweight. You can read up on them on the ol’ Wikipedia, but the long and the short of it is that they allow you to have an incredibly strong barrier without the usual associated weight. And it’s awesome.

But that doesn’t solve the whole problem, since while the projectile is stopped it still exerts a tremendous amount of force over an extremely small area. That can lead to some nasty broken bones and associated trauma depending on where the round hits. The solution is to spread the force of the impact over a greater area. The way that AR500 Armor does that while still allowing the plate to be flexible is by using a non-Newtonian backing.

Again, Wikipedia has your back on the science but essentially it’s a material that is flexible when you slowly move it or impact it, but turns to a solid when struck with a great force. Like a bullet would. So when the force of a round hits the otherwise flexible backing, it hardens and disperses the impact over a much wider area than would otherwise be possible.

That’s all great in theory, but what really matters is how it performs in the real world. And boy does it perform.

Testing body armor gets boring after a while, and when the manufacturer provides this kind of video evidence of the fact that it works, there’s very little our own testing can add. So, it indeed works and stops most of the projectiles that you might be concerned about encountering.

AR500 Armor provides two versions of the nifty soft IIIA plate. The first is the standard vest-style cut, which will slip into any existing plate carrier or vest and provide more or less the same protection as a standard Kevlar vest but much, much lighter. The SafeGuard Kevlar IIIA armor that we’ve tested before clocks in at about 5.5 pounds. These sheets will only run 1 pound each. But while the standard option is nice, it’s the second option that really intrigues me.

AR500 Armor sells a 11″ by 14″ plate that fits almost perfectly into my 5.11 Messenger Bag and turns it into a real bullet stopping piece of equipment. Even better, it only adds about 1 pound to the bag and doesn’t make it any less flexible. But the best part is that I can bring this bag anywhere and have my IIIA protection with me at all times without raising any red flags or having to answer any unwanted questions about why I’m wearing a bullet proof vest. I recently flew from San Antonio to New York City’s JFK airport and back with this IIIA plate in my carry-on bag, and then proceeded to carry it everywhere in the city, and didn’t get a single question about it from the local constabulary. Or my family, for that matter. It was completely covert.

That’s really what these plates give you, and where you get your bang for your buck. They’re lighter and more covert than the standard Kevlar plates, even if you use them in a traditional vest-style setup. Oh, and did I mention that they’re cheaper than their Kevlar buddies? The best deal on a Kevlar vest I could find was around $400, but I can kit out a vest with a set of these plates for $350.

About Nick Leghorn

Nick Leghorn is a gun nerd living and working in San Antonio, Texas. In his free time, he's a competition shooter (USPSA, 3-gun and NRA High Power), private pilot, and enjoys mixing statistics and science with firearms. Now on sale: Getting Started with Firearms by yours truly!

I wonder what the dimensions of the vest panels are. I may slip them into my existing carriers if they fit. Our vests our sized, as are most vests for police officers. You want something that’ll fit we’ll underneath your uniform shirt and the duty belt so that you don’t look like a soup sandwich.

It’s really not great for the lower back. Ah, well, at least I still have my health insurance. Plus, I get to practice with about 100 rounds per month absolutely free. Wow. At least I know my guns work.

We don’t have the facilities to test the plate properly. We could shoot it, but it wouldn’t tell you anything useful. Their video is pretty much the NIJ standard test, and I’ve talked to the guy that did the test enough to trust the results.

I’m all for wanton destruction, but I have other plans for this plate.

The thing that concerns me about soft armor tests is not that the manufacturer produced the video, since it looks like they did a pretty thorough job of it, but that there is no definitive measure of the trauma to the chest behind the vest. Yes, not even the .44 Magnums penetrated, but it sure as hell looked like they all would have hurt, lot. We need to get the Mythbusters on this to do some REAL analysis of what happens behind the vest.

Absolutely. If I have to wear a trauma plate behind this, it then it’s basically hard armor and I might as well wear DKX IIIA Dyneema plates at 20oz. The manufacterer also needs to provide more information, such as whether it sinks or floats and any usage limitations: temperature ranges if applicable, whether it’s safe to drop, if the armor lasts indefinitely or needs to be replaced after some years, anything else we need to know to keep it in working order. Until I get the answers, and I’m looking for them, I’ll stick with DKX which before hearing of this I considered the best IIIA armor available (still the best Level III, except maybe against M855). I see great promise in this IF it does the same job and is flexible and lighter. Big if!

I’m also looking forward to reviews of the Ceradyne (3M) Defender Seamless Ballistic Helmet, the commercial version of the new Enchanced Combat Helmet the US Marine Corps, Army, and Navy have adopted. It’s claimed to be the first practical helmet that can stop a round of 7.62x39mm. Last time I checked, it was running around $2,000 a helmet. But a helmet that can stop an intermediate round, not just pistol rounds, is definitely worth it if you’re preparing for combat.

This isn’t carbon or nanotube. I just received one of the inserts. They are 5 layers of Chinese make generic goldflex, 18 layers of Chinese made HDPE, and 1 layer of carbon matrix. Not near enough material for level IIIa. Usually 32 to 34 layers of this Chinese material is required to pass IIIa test. The 1 layer of carbon material won’t stop a hard spit.

1. There’s more demand for it, so the development costs can be recouped more easily.
2. It serves as a testing platform for level IV.

That might actually stop a rifle round, but the blunt force impact isn’t spread enough. Remember, this is a one pound flexible plate. And for every person shot with a rifle round, 100 people are shot with a pistol round.

The market for this is EDC. It’s something you can wear daily.

Plus, imagine layering this with a steel plate. Now you have even better stopping capability. A big problem with steel plates is the spalling. You can coat it, but that coat can be 3/4 of a pound more. Now for a pound more, you have no spalling, and the ability to wear a very flexible vest when warranted.

It’s a pretty nice product. I’d like to see some shooters cuts, but it might be flexible enough that isn’t needed.

That’s what I’d like TTAG to review, not the plate’s stopping power, but it’s usability. Does it get in the way of shouldering, does it restrict movement, how easy is it to bend over. Those kinds of test that often get ignored.

As Tom wrote, in many of them, you open and hang it from your neck around your chest, providing a quick vest.

In many places, wearing a vest is either not possible, or presents many problems, and having the ability to add the near equivalent of a vest is another tool.

Many of the bag plates on the market cost more than $130 and are heavier, and can’t also be used as a in a vest.

They even make bullet resistant clip boards, which provide far less functionality that a 11×13 plate. It’s because there are places where you can’t be armored, but you can have a clip board. So the clip board is better than the current alternatives.

I saw something on the InterWeb a few months ago about a new flexible fabric only one layer thick that would stop a 9mm or .38 Spcl. round. Wish I had kept that link. Still seems like you would need some sort of backing to distribute the blunt force trauma, however.

Depends on what you get. Some products appear to be a lot cheaper. I have no clue what they’re using so I don’t know if this is anything like what they have in their product, but it costs far less than hundreds of dollars per gram.

I haven’t yet watched the video, so perhaps this was addressed there, but I didn’t see anything about it in the article, so I’m going to ask about it.

Kevlar degrades over time, to the point that its suitability/usability “expires” within 3-5 years of manufacture. I believe some of this is related to moisture, but not all. Does this new type of panel have an expiration date under normal use? Any concerns about moisture, UV exposure, heat, cold (-20 F or colder is not unusual where I live), or any other real-world limitations on use?

I wanna know why it “blew up like a balloon” when shot with the 44mag. The deformity caused coverage issues, and makes me wonder about the blunt force trauma that the wearer would suffer. Even though there was no penetration, there seemed to be what looked like nasty shrapnel damage on the surface of ballistics gel.

Pretty uninformed article. Modern Kevlar, or especially Kevlar hybrids are extremely flexible and light. A Rhino Armor 11×14″, comparing to what is quoted in the article, is 17 ounces, very flexible, and has a 30+ year proven track record, and are $129 from our distributor. Carbon nano tubes are new, there is no long term testing on how they hold up. So proven performer or fancy new item with no record?